A Southport Walk on Sunday March 3rd, 2024

I had been in search of newer locations to explore in my beloved adopted town of Southport, this one had been tempting me for a month and when all three weather forecasting sources agreed with one-another, for once, well who was I to turn down this lovely opportunity?

First of all I did have to get to the start of the more rural part of the walk which is after all a walk on roads, this was around three and a half miles of urban plodding, but I did manage to avoid most of the noisier roads – well apart from when a high-powered motor cycles shot across Roe Lane, minus its rider! He said he was okay but in all honesty how can you be alright falling of a huge bike at anything more than crawling pace? I ambled my way from Kew via Southbank Road (Town Lane) and over the racetrack which is Scarisbrick Road, then up Chambers Road, Ivy Street and Tithebard Road – this part of the route is very familiar to me as it’s the way I try to take when visiting our local Chinese Takeaway (Woks Cooking). After that it was over Norwood Avenue / Road along Bispham Road and up to Wennington Road. After crossing over Roe Lane (where the biker dismounted) I went along Beresford Drive / Denmark Road then crossed over the roundabout and onto Cambridge Road / Botanic Road calling in at the One Stop Shop for a bottle of water before heading off to pastures (or at least Lane’s) new!

And what a surprise, the street rapidly turned into a much more rural affair with a bridge spanning over brilliantly blue water, paddocks of horses, barns and the sound of Canada Geese over head. The street that was became a single-track road, punctuated with many a minor pothole but nothing anywhere near as bad as on some of West Lancs’s major roads! I was impressed and surprised to see other walkers out on route and happily exchanged greetings with all whom I encountered, in total this was ten pedestrians – ten more than on my last outing! After a while the path appeared to get much wetter but never so much as to fill me with a desire to turn back round, which would have done me no favours, before long I met the t-junction with Longmeaneygate – it really is called that, for a time which then becomes Moss Lane.

The remainder of the walk was a pleasent, if a little boring, slalom through various streets until hitting Wennington Road and from here back to home via Foul Lane, the new path alongside Sainsbury’s and calling in at Hobby Craft for art supplies. The final leg of the walk featured the treacherous crossing of Meols Cop Road before taking the pedestrian and cyclists’ path around the back of Southport Hospital, cutting through Fearnley Green housing estate and a further slalom through the quieter streets of the Folkstone Road estate.

 

I do appear to have deleted all of the photos taken on this walk, which is something of a shame but a mixed blessing as there can be hundreds eating into my Icloud drive space!